


Never Could Go Back

by bansheenanigans



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Subterfuge, Suicidal Thoughts, mild pining, presumed dead sibling, so many Dalish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-11-03 14:32:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10969200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bansheenanigans/pseuds/bansheenanigans
Summary: The account of Inquisitor Kestrel Lavellan, Dalish hunter, spy, assassin, and grieving sister.





	1. Veridian

It was too green, still. Kestrel Lavellan had not anticipated it all being so…green. She had long listened to her baby sister try to explain the Fade, try to describe that sort of dreaming as Kraehe studied under their Keeper. Kestrel had entertained the notion, of some fantastical plane that was green but not lush, bright but without a sun, towering without a sky. Kraehe had tried so hard to get her older sister to understand, but Kestrel was simply no mage. She had understood that she’d never see the damn thing. Kestrel understood arrows, feathers and carefully concealed knives, lullabies and dreams of running through fields of golden-green chasing after some beast. She understood aching dreams of her parents, long since lost, and the warmth of younger siblings pulled in for hugs. There was no need to think beyond those things, not for her. She’d been 28. Kraehe had been 17, Lidae and Osprey their confident 23. Kestrel was content to leave dreaming to her younger siblings, content to stand on solid ground. It was that levelheaded discipline and keen listening ear that had endeared her employer to her for her little spy mission. Perhaps if she had further contemplated the dreaming sky, she would still have been with her siblings, safe and sound in their small dwellings, still been always and ever with feet planted solid.  
The ground had stopped feeling solid after the Conclave. Her ears heard everything and held nothing. Where her steps had always been followed quickly by her sister, or her brothers, Kestrel Lavellan’s steps in Haven were hollow echoes. The ground felt like it would plunge from below her, leave her falling into the caverns of the earth, swallowed into Thedas itself and gone far from words like ‘Herald', and ‘ambassador’, ‘Divine’. In those first few weeks after stabilizing the Breach she had craved just that. Falling empty into the dark. Free of scattered dreams where everything was so green, green, shattering screams and wails and cold breath on her neck, frail hands, brutal claws. She remembered nothing, and those dreams held no answers, rushing from her grasp and gone from her eyes like white foxes in the snow.  
She had played along well, held her panic and maddening fear as a seedling in her throat, dragged through the valley by the Seeker, introduced to the dwarf with his lovely crossbow, the elf who seemed wrong. She had played obedient captive. She had closed the Breach. And staring into that scarred chasm in the air, she saw green and nothing more. Her eyes couldn’t see into the Fade. It was not her birthright.  
It had been Kraehe’s.  
Where was Kraehe?  
Nobody she asked when she woke up knew. They had not seen another Dalish girl in Haven. And why would they? Kestrel had taught Kraehe to be nothing more than a slip of air, an afterthought, a specter. She had taught them all. It had made her a good hunter, her brothers careful and quick and clever, and her sister…It had been meant to make her more careful. More mindful, especially among humans, faithful humans.  
That thought kept the seedling from strangling her, for a day or two.  
But by the third day awake in Haven, the third day of being a Herald to a deity she did not believe in, no matter how much time she spent among humans, Kestrel’s panic grew roots, spread through her sore limbs. Kraehe was not in Haven. She was not in the valley. She was nowhere.  
Kraehe was gone.  
Cassandra had needed to drag Kestrel in from the snow and shove her in front of a fire for hours to avoid losing toes, surely thinking that Kestrel had taken her chance to escape and not made it far enough. And perhaps in a way it was right. Kestrel had been trying to escape. But not in the same sense.  
She was a walking ghost through Haven as the advisors…her advisors, in a way, made preparations for Kestrel to venture to the Hinterlands, to appeal to some Mother. Humans bowed to her. Inquisition recruits asked her to assess their forms. Elves looked at her with marveling eyes. Well, most elves.  
Solas, the wrong elf, he regarded her with something she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.  
She finally spoke to him with a voice so empty it was like the whispering of a shade, the day before they would depart.  
She asked him about the Fade. She asked him so, so much about the Fade. He knew about it, and she didn’t, and as much as he made her teeth set on edge, made her constantly check her back for his eyes, she listened to him for hours. She made it a good show, and he seemed to actually like her, approve of her, and she’d almost feel bad for tricking him if she had the ability to feel anything in her chest that wasn’t the tangling, crushing roots of her panic. She would use him. Perhaps she would even apologize to him later. She doubted it, though.  
—————  
Every rift she closes in the Hinterlands, in the Mire, she stares into until she thinks she’ll go blind, or until one of her companions presses her to close it quickly. Some of them are more insistent than others, the Lady Vivienne in particular, her discomfort always noticeable, almost palpable on Kestrel’s dry tongue. Kestrel and Vivienne are at odds yet still, the gaping chasm between their worlds and experiences barely branched by common cause and Kestrel’s growing skills at manipulation. She thinks Vivienne sees potential in her, after Val Royeaux, and she’s not quite sure if that’s something she’s proud of, but the refined mage reminds her much of her mother. Strong and fearful, wise and careful. It’s comforting, in a way, to feel the same people even far from home.  
Solas is always too gentle trying to get her to close the rifts. She thinks he must know what she’s looking for, though no one in the Inquisition even knows she has a sister. She’s told them of her brothers-well, she’s told Varric of her brothers, because she thinks they’d like him terribly much, as she does when he tells his stories over the fire and never presses her more than she needs, and of course Varric has relayed her story of Lidae and the wild hart to the entire tavern… But never Kraehe. No one knew what she was looking for. Nobody knew why she got so close to the rifts, reached out her hand and tried to catch those ephemeral strands of another plane’s air.  
They likely just thought her crazy.  
Sera certainly did, even past their initial impasse, where Kestrel was unapologetically Dalish and Sera was unapologetically crude. They had warmed to each other after a while, but Sera thought Kestrel was crazy, and Sera was right.  
There is a sapling growing through her body, rooting her to this place, this Inquisition, and she yearns to hack at them with a borrowed axe, rend her from the earth that had started to feel more and more like it wasn’t going to crack open and take her after all.


	2. Sable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kestrel and the Iron Bull do not like each other very much, but they definitely understand each other.

The Storm Coast makes her skin itch, and it’s not just the salty air and the gentle squish of the sand. The mercenary, the Qunari, The Iron Bull, has rendered her off-kilter as he joins her small party in exploring the coast. Worse, she thinks, he knows he has, and it makes her feel pitifully weak as she clambers up rock face to stare into the rain at night, the sounds of the camp far below her drowned out in waves.   
Stupid Ben-Hassrath.   
He’s pinned her down in moments and she hates him terribly much already, but his value is inescapable, and Leliana would likely tear into her when she returned to Haven and the knowledge of Kestrel having let go of incredibly rare intelligence just because she thought Bull understood her too well, Commander Cullen would be disappointed at the loss of potential…Perish the thought. Making her advisors happy with her choices kept their eyes off of her when she retreated into herself. She’d handle it, like she handled her discomfort with Solas (handled is the wrong phrase-she smiles through sharp clenched teeth at him, listens nightly to his information, and uses it when she stares down rifts and searches for a way back in. She does not like him any more than she had. He still watches her and makes her feel unbalanced).   
She is set into stone when there is a throat cleared behind her, her eyes fixed on the blurred horizon with a quiet anger. Her fingers don’t reach for her bow, but her left hand skims the handle of a silverite dagger tucked into cleverly sewn spaces on her pants (they may be hideous but she won’t deny that they’re useful). She won’t kill him, of course. But she might stab him. It would only be right, it would be explainable, he startled her-   
“That'd be a shit start to our working relationship, boss.” He rumbles and settles on the rock next to her, respectfully distant but still close enough to talk and not get drowned out by waves or thunder.   
“All good working relationships start with a measure of irrational violence and distrust, I’ve found as of late.” She grits out, but her fingers leave the dagger be, and she turns her head the tiniest bit to look up at his face. He is massive, and she has always been small, even for an elf, and he’s left his side open to her. She could puncture a lung if she was quick enough. And she is quick enough.   
But she’s tired, and he has hiked up here for a reason, and the Chargers would likely do subpar work if she maimed their leader purposefully, and she likes them, at least. Their nature reminds her of her hunters, and she misses them, it’s enough for now.   
“I don’t doubt you could do it. I’d probably even be impressed, try to recruit you for the Chargers if this Herald business didn’t work out. But I didn’t hike up here to be stabbed. I could do that anywhere.” Bull says lightly, and there’s a smile involved, and she wants so badly to shove him right off the rock face. “You don’t like me."   
“Is it truly that noticeable? I must try harder.” She replies drily, and stretches, falling back and letting her spine rest against the wet rock. Her mud-brown hair has loosened itself from her quickly done ponytail, and will inevitably tangle in grass and weed and root, but the cold, slick stone feels good against her aching back.   
“You’re good, I’ll give you that.” He stays upright, and if she glances, she can see every muscle and scar and tattooed line on his shoulders and back. He is stunningly well constructed. She would gladly have him at the vanguard. She would even gladly just look at him, appreciate all that the qunari lack of shirts provided. She just doesn’t want him anywhere near her, doesn’t want him to know her. “But you’re grinding your teeth dull, not to even get started on the fact that you won’t look me in the eye since I mentioned your little rift-staring session.”   
“It’s a little difficult. You are so very tall, and you only have the one. Oh, and the rain and fog, it’s just so hard to see anything.” Kestrel trills, her false Herald smile sliding into place. “It’s nothing personal.”   
“It’s definitely personal.”   
“Only a little personal.”   
He rests an arm on one massive knee and keeps his view fixed to the dark expanse of the sea. She’s grateful.   
“I didn’t sign on to follow a woman intent on killing herself, you know.” His words are measured, and they’re also right, and she hates that too. She hates him.   
“You signed on to follow an Inquisition, I thought. Oh, and to spy on it as well.”   
“An Inquisition without an Inquisitor. You’ve got no leader. Just a Herald. Who was a spy too, if I’ve heard right.”   
“What about Cassandra? She started it. Or Cullen, he’s a commander.” She keeps her tone light, almost bored, but she knows. She knows somewhere in her that there’s another answer, as much as she knows that she’s taken to calling them ‘her advisors’ too frequently. There is a part of her afraid to claim it, afraid to use them all so callously in her mad quest. She doesn’t dignify his truth, that she was a spy, and it works just as well to confirm it as anything she could have said.   
“Cullen’s good with the troops, and Cassandra’s fierce, but neither of them have the stuff.”   
“Maybe I should have a go of it, if it comes to it.” She can’t hold her tongue, and she feels the grief and guilt settle its branches further into her limbs, holding her to the earth as she says it. Foolish, foolish girl. Being Inquisitor won’t further her plans. It won’t bring her what she wants. It will only put more eyes on her where she’d rather there were none.   
“You? Why you?” He answers gruffly, giving her an odd look as she pulls herself back up to her elbows with some effort.   
“You’re right. We’re an Inquisition without an Inquisitor. We’re…directionless. If it came down to it, if we needed it, well, no one else is stepping in, and why not me? Why not give what I have left to this damned thing?” She’s more bitter than she planned, and for a moment there’s a silence that hangs heavy in the air.   
“Huh. For a second there, you almost sounded like a qunari.” He shakes his head, and she watches listlessly, listening to the ocean waves. “We don’t pick leaders from the smartest, the bravest, even the strongest. We pick the people who are willing to get the job done.”   
“Mm. I guess that’s reasonable. Maybe more people should keep that in mind.” She sits up all the way, lets her eyes slide closed, feels the salt water sting her skin, the rock against her toes.   
“Maybe. And maybe if you’re planning on getting the job done, you should try to avoid dying.”   
“Bull, I dislike you. But only because you’re right.”   
“I can live with that, boss.” He smiles at her, but he doesn’t leave, and finally she has to stand, hike back down the hill with him behind and make her way into her tent before he leaves her be. She doesn’t blame him. She knows she’s crazy.   
But maybe in a way, she likes the idea. Even if she doesn’t want to like it. It takes weeks to leave her mind, grant her peace.  
She starts to bring Bull along on more missions. She doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t, and that’s perfectly fine by them both, for the moment.


	3. Scarlet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kestrel wishes she had never chosen the Templars.

They talk often, Kestrel and Bull, casually, chats about differences in their cultures, trade talk about listening and watching, about strategy. But they haven’t talked in that same way they did, that night on the rocks. Neither Iron Bull nor Kestrel Lavellan touch on that understanding, the things they know about each other’s nature that others would not. Perhaps that is a kindness. Neither of them is there for the purest of reasons. Both of them have secrets.   
They don’t talk, really talk, at least for some time, until the road to Therinfal Redoubt. It is a stressful journey, too many bickering Orlesian houses in their company. Kestrel can barely take a step without some well-dressed pomp posturing to her, claiming a divine occasion. For Kestrel it is far from a divine occasion. It’s a business transaction. And they are simply bargaining chips. They must be, for her. Nothing more and nothing less.   
Her cheeks ache from her Herald’s smile, and she has gone to too many lengths to make both noble and Templar comfortable-her clothes are fine and formal, dark tones with the Inquisition’s symbolism, well-fit boots that make her feel like a dressed up doll more than an agent of an organization. There is nothing Dalish about her coat, her pants, her gloves. She had drawn no lines, no boundary, but kindly, Vivienne had stopped a noble’s “innocent” suggestion of a cream that would hide her vallaslin. She was unusually touched by that, at the least.   
But still. It is all human, all Andrastian, perfectly respectable. It makes her particularly uncomfortable, and they are but a day out from the Templar stronghold when the itch in her skin is unlivable and she strips down to underthings and pulls on her old, worn leggings and soft blouse, spends her final day on the road feeling the dirt, stretching and hunting in the small bits of forestry whenever a break in march was requested, more for the distraction than for sport or need. She needs to feel herself for a moment before their negotiations turned her back into the Herald.   
It’s when she heads back at sunset, bow hooked over her shoulder and a soft fennec fur slung into her belt, that she spots Bull and Varric laughing apart from the camp, and unable to return to nobles and Vivienne’s teachings quite yet, she settles in near them. Varric doesn’t break stride, telling some wild tale of the Qunari in Kirkwall, but Bull gives her a nod.   
“-And I shit you not, Hawke told the Arishok ‘What? Is a pile of dead tal-vashoth not as thoughtful as a bouquet?’” Varric chuckled, shaking his head. “How she didn’t lose her head right then, I’ll never know. That’s just how Hawke is.”   
“You attract the best sort of crazy, Varric.” Bull chortled, a massive hand slapping his knee. And quietly, Kestrel smiled. Varric’s stories were her favorite, and for a moment, with Bull’s laughter and Varric’s shit-eating grin, her limbs felt less heavy. She felt, deep amongst the roots in her body, the branches clouding her head, a sort of assurance. It would soon enough be done. She could afford a half moment of peace, without guilt.   
“Boss, you good? You hightailed it out of camp so early this morning that the Orlesians thought you’d fallen back into the Fade. Viv barely contained them.”   
“I thought Madame de Fer might be able to contain a few nobles for one day, in fact, I believed she might take pleasure in it where I cannot.” For a moment, she smiles lazily, stretches her arms out into grass and breathing in the clear air.   
“Oh, the Iron Lady was certainly enjoying herself when we left. But you’ll probably get an earful later, you know that.” Varric offered with a laugh, clapping his hand on her exposed shoulder. “She ‘expects much better graces from our Lady Herald’, Nester.”   
“As much as I desire to give my all to the Inquisition, my dear, favorite dwarf, occasionally I like to breathe without Orlesians asking if we Dalish partake in rapturous orgies under the full moon and offer up children to demons.” Kestrel snorts, a real laugh for a brief moment, and stares up at the clouds in the pink and orange sky, and further, the faint green of the Breach waiting.   
“If that’s what you get up to, Lavellan, maybe I should have paid more attention to the Dalish.” Bull jokes, and Kestrel rolls onto her side, props her head up on a hand, a smile quirking at her lips.   
“Oh, is that so? But what use would elven passions have for a follower of the Qun?” If she rolls her shoulder a little more, her blouse will slide from it, and for a brief second she considers it. But there is no time for petty, petulant seductions. Bull will see past them. That no longer bothers her. “You told me yourself- what was it? A rod wrapped in leather-“   
“Aaaaalright, I’m out of here. See you back at camp.” Varric’s feet propelled him away, back in the direction of fawning nobles, and both Bull and Kestrel watched him go in quiet grins. They fade soon enough, more relaxed, more certain.   
“I didn’t tell you that story so you could use it to give Varric nightmares, boss.” Bull whistles, mirth still there in his voice.   
“Here I was under the impression you told me that story in exchange for details about my dalliances with the possibly hypothetical redheaded merchant girl in the Vimmarks.”   
Bull snorts. “I’m determined to find out if you’re playing me on that one.”   
Kestrel smiles wickedly, and fakes a yawn. “Maybe you’ll get to the bottom of it before this whole thing ends. Put all that ben-hassrath training to work before it's too late.”   
There is a pause, a beat, before Bull looks at her fully. She knows the question, he doesn't even need to ask it. She won't make him.   
"This is the end game, you know? We strike a deal with the Templars, we seal the breach. Everyone else goes home and moves on. Varric rebuilds Kirkwall. Vivienne has her parties and Circles. You have the Chargers, Sera's got Red Jennies, Blackwall has the Wardens, Solas has...the Fade, I guess. All back to normal. All free and clear.”   
“And you have your clan.” Bull doesn’t quite ask, and a part of her, the part that always wants to think everyone is lying, not just her, wants to believe it’s because he knows she’ll lie to him, and he’s daring her. Like it’s their usual game, a lie for a lie, a truth under the table. Just like Solas and Bull play chess in their heads, she and Bull play a constant game. A flirt, a lie, a truth in different words. She will miss it, maybe, when she is gone. Maybe he won’t miss her, though.   
“We all have something, of course.” She decides on this, rolls her shoulders back to ease the crick in her neck before sitting up. “Just a little bit longer.”   
Bull gives her a look, one brow quirked up and a ghost of a frown, and she smiles back dazzlingly, the Herald sitting in Kestrel Lavellan’s skin. The frown is no longer a ghost. Kestrel finds her feet, uses his shoulder for balance before straightening out her now grass-stained blouse.   
This time she walks back to camp without him behind her, and she doesn’t see the Iron Bull again until Vivienne is at least 30 minutes into some very kindly concern, covered up expertly to almost seem like a lecture. They don’t talk again that evening, and the last bit of the road to Therinfal Redoubt is covered by too much Orlesian chatter to even bother.   
Two more things left, and Kestrel will die closing the Breach, one way or another. It’s all she can hope for. A freedom from roots and guilt and lies.   
\----------  
It is green again. She’s started to really hate the color green; it clings to her breath and clouds her eyes. So much fog. The smell of roasting meat invades her nostrils, almost sickeningly thick, until she stumbles in the fog and falls, her hand crunching through something flaky and coarse. A look down through watering eyes shows she’s crashed her arm right through the ribcage of a corpse, squished her fingers in the liquefying innards. Panic makes her look around, to see burning bodies, and she nearly vomits. It’s so much like the valley. So much like before.   
It takes her time to find her feet again, and she is gasping on the cold.   
There is Templar blood splattered on her fine coat, shards of red lyrium tangled in her hair when she stands, and still a shiver of fog wrapping her shoulders, but she walks forward, quiet, echoing steps. Everything around her feels wrong, shifting, too bright and too dim all at once. Her eyes can’t focus.   
She almost walks into them.   
Leliana’s eyes stare into hers, but the voice is wrong, garbled, like listening to her spymaster through a hundred walls, through a crowd. A blade run cross the Commander’s throat, he falls, she watches, and listens. The thing that is not Leliana steps into the wall, and not-Josephine circles, warbling in an uncomfortable approximation, but leagues under the water, rushing waves of words through a painted mouth.   
“Being you will be so much more interesting than being the Lord Seeker.” It laughs, excited, fascinated, and Kestrel nearly laughs back, in its not-Josephine face. She is quiet instead, still, watching, listening. She is circled like a predator would circle prey, but Kestrel Lavellan will never be prey, and this game has purpose, one she will steal. “Do you know what the Inquisition can become, Lavellan? You’ll see. When I’m done, the Elder One will kill you, and then, then I will be you.”   
“I feel you should know that being me is far less satisfying than the fine packaging would suggest.” Kestrel offers this without feeling, standing stone still, eyes closed soft against the oppressive green. “I’d really rather have you try to kill me now, if that’s possible. I’m not fond of nightmares. Or green. And this hall has much of both.”   
It laughs, and it is decidedly not Josephine’s laugh, a gap, a flaw in the copy.   
“A nightmare would be a pleasure, compared to how I would learn you. When I learn enough to wear your face, your closest companions will be mine.”   
Not-Josephine glides around once more, a swish of metallic skirts in the fog, and then only her words remain.   
“Glory is coming, and the Elder One wants you to serve him like everyone else. By dying in the right way.”   
“Well, you’d best start learning, then.” She sighs, and opens her eyes again, striding forward. “I’m a liar by trade, you know. I will not make this easy. I care not for this body or this life, but I’ll not have even my puppet be a slave. You play your game, puppet, and I’ll play yours. We’ll see who’s the quicker study.”   
“I am not your toy! I am Envy! And I will know you.” It’s the Commander, back from the dreaming dead, leaned over the war table, but not quite right, not quite the centering posture she’s come to recognize. Envy is too slippery, gliding. But the Commander is not its target.   
“You are a toy. And I am far too old for puppets and dolls that think they can force others to play.”   
It growls through Cullen’s mouth, and she laughs at it, until before her eyes there is a reflection of herself, of the self that she was. This, this is a perfect copy, save for the eyes, glowing green and bright. It is perfect down to her vallaslin, pale red Sylaise, to the hastily stolen coat she’d worn over her own hunters garb to the Conclave.   
“I fear the nose isn’t quite right, dear Envy. Such a shame.”   
“Tell me, Herald, in your mind, tell me what you think.” The monster Commander stabs her reflection in the back, and it falls, her own voice crying out in pain. “Tell me what you feel.” The war table burns, and she can feel the blood of her reflection soak her toes in their fine boots. A knife in her hand, her reflection stares at her, dying, dying…dead. The Commander is gone. The voice remains. “Tell me what you see."   
“What I desire most.” She answers truthfully, and then she is alone.   
She runs, and does not slow down when she is suddenly in the dungeon at Haven, watching her reflection chained to the floor, screamed at by Cassandra. She does not halt when her reflection issues orders to Inquisition troops, talks of power over Thedas, merely slows, spins, traces her hand over the reflection’s cheek, a wry smile painted thin on her own face.   
“Is that all you can do? All you can want? No one who knows me will know this.”   
“Accusing, trying to find my weakness. Is that who you are?” It cackles and implodes, a sharp burst of light before Kestrel is alone again, and she runs on, feeling the dry toes of her boots as a sign of fortune.   
She nearly makes it past the pillars before they begin to weep green, acidic burn on her shoulders, dripping down her leg. She falls against an outer column, hissing.   
“Were you honest, putting the people first? When I am you-“ Her reflection, Envy, starts, shadows of Inquisition scouts bent at her feet. Kestrel takes a deep breath and sprints back through, the splash of green drowning out that terrible voice. Shy to the left, dash forward, again, right now, back, and she is out of the pillar’s ghastly spew, her lungs burning.   
There is a barrier on this doorway, and again, she wishes for a moment that Kraehe was here. Or even one of her new mages. She has no way to get through. No hiding place. As she catches her breath, Envy drones on, but quietly, a new voice, softer, gentler, a young man’s voice, not a perversion, joins the rush through her ears.   
“You’re hurting, helpless, hasty.” She listens to this voice instead, concentrates, and turns back to stare into the spilling pillars. Another door, just have to time it, run quick… “What happens to the hammer when there are no more nails?”   
Envy is angry, and Kestrel is quick, and her sleeve is not nearly as melted as it could be when she comes out the other side. Another door, and she nearly falls inside, breath barely catching in her throat. The pain in her back is agony, and she only needs a second. Just a second, and then she’ll run again, she promises, Kraehe…   
Her hand is on the doorknob when the gentle voice bids her wait. And so she does. An echo follows her in the disturbed bedroom.   
“Envy is hurting you.” A flash out of the corner of her eye, a wide brimmed hat. “Mirrors are mirrors are memories, face it can feel but not fake… I want to help. You, not Envy.”   
Softly, with her sister’s trust in her chest instead of her own, she nods to the empty room. It’s a familiar sort of lull. The sort of feeling she got from her brothers, her sister, when they were young and earnest.   
“I’m Cole.” The voice stammers, almost alarmed. “We’re inside you. Or, I am, you’re always inside you. It’s easy to hear, harder to be a part of what you’re hearing. But i’m here, hearing, helping, I. Envy hurt you, is hurting you. I tried to help, then I was here, in you. It’s. It’s not usually like this.”   
She stares up, at a boy on the ceiling, a boy no older than her sister, pale and drawn and ragged. But he is warm. Feels warm.   
“I’m afraid not a lot of that makes sense. But I’m listening, Cole.” She uses his name, and there is a screeching, a crying from that damned hallway. She turns for a second and Cole is gone, and then he is there, sitting on the headboard.   
“Every Templar knew when you arrived. They were impressed, but not like the Lord Seeker.”   
“Well, it appears that the Lord Seeker is an envy demon, with eyes set on me. Poor choice, but then again, are demons known for their good judgment?” Her breath is easier now, and she straightens up, feels the needling pain in her back. “I wouldn’t really know, but I don’t think they are.”   
“Yes.” Cole looks down, sad eyes hidden by hat brim. “It twisted the commanders, forced their fury, their fight. They’re red, inside.”   
Kestrel shakes out her hair, and in her gloved hands holds up a shard of the red lyrium tangled there. Cole nods.   
“You’re frozen. Envy wants to take your face. I hurt it, and then I got in.” Cole says plainly.   
“Is there any way I can get out how you got in?” She asks, dropping the shard to the floor. “Or is that. Not a good idea?”   
“You’d probably die. It’s your head, you shouldn’t be out of it.”   
“That’s reasonable. Can I evict my other, ah…tenants? No offense, of course. You’re a perfectly nice young man, I think. Right?”   
“All of this is Envy. If you keep going, Envy stretches. It takes strength to make more.” Cole hopes down from the bed, and he is definitely taller than she is, though all skin and bone, a delicate thing. If this had been any other circumstance, if she had been her old self, perhaps she would have taken him in, made sure he was alright. But there were other things to worry about, other priorities.   
She only had so many steps left until she could die. This was premature.   
“Being one person is hard. Being more, many, too many, and Envy breaks down. You break out.”   
“He and I have that in common, I think.” She responds drily, and straightens her coat, finding it strangely without burns or blood now. “I’ll keep running, then. I did tell him it wouldn’t be easy.”   
“Maybe. I hope it helps.” Cole shakes his head, and Kestrel offers him a smile, a genuine smile. They run. Cole tells her what to think, what to fix, to change the path, and she tries to keep her eyes forward, ignore every distraction Envy puts forth. Another Commander. Prison cells. Dying Chantry Mothers. Josephine. A forest of death.   
“It’s angry. But that’s okay. So are you.” Cole provides, and Kestrel runs on, up stone stairs, letting the whisperings trickle into her ears. The Empress murdered, like her bust had been stabbed in Therinfal. The Inquisition hosting demons. Up, up, up, and her legs are screaming, but her ears are singing, little things tucked away for later, and then she is there.   
The door weeps. Her reflection is there, then, throwing her up against the wall.   
“Unfair, unfair, that thing kept you whole, kept you from giving me your shape!” It wails in her voice, eyes burning that same green.   
“What could you gain from being me?” She chokes, and this is honesty, brutal, angry honesty. There is nothing to gain from being Kestrel Lavellan. Nothing but grief and guilt and pain and lies. That is all she is.   
“We’ll start again. More pain this time. The Elder One still comes!” Envy cries, thrusting its fingers deep into her ribs. Her vision clouds, and for a moment, she can almost see something else, watching her.   
“It’s frightened of you.” Cole’s voice enters her ears, soft and distant. It distracts Envy long enough. She drives her head into its chest, knocks it back before she slumps back against the weeping door.   
And suddenly she’s there. Still. A pale, writhing creature of limbs and gapes on the ground, her companions clustered around her. She feels no pain. Cole is gone. The fight continues.   
\------  
Envy is a liar and a hunter, but she is a better one, and she is angry. She decimates the Red Templars, and when she is out of arrows, she drags the daggers from her boots and gores open Envy until her fury abates. Until she is once more cold and tired.   
She offers the Templars an alliance, and this earns their trust, their loyalty. They trust her, an elf, covered in blood and demon gore, and they do not know that the woman they have put their trust in will use them to kill herself.


	4. Blanc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kestrel readies for an end, and is thoroughly disappointed.

Cole is at Haven when they return, perched on the War Table, and every one of her companions present is ready to fight him, but she simply holds out a weary hand and helps him down, pats his shoulder gently. Her tired eyes bore into Cassandra’s as she declares that Cole will stay. They don’t even have to tell her so to let her know they disapprove, but that is the nature of things. This is Kestrel’s last decision as Herald. This is what she will keep.   
She’ll die soon, she knows. But Cole had helped her, and Cole was a comforting presence, so she spends the start of her final hours in Haven talking to the boy, thanking him. He knows what she thinks, and for a moment she almost thinks he might be sad, but he understands that it would help her stop hurting. He accepts it. She avoids Solas, who is too excited for this to be done, and too interested in her. She spends time with Varric and Sera in the tavern, listening to them bicker cheerily, and slips the bard there, Maryden, a scribbled sheet of paper with a translation of one of her old songs, the kind she sang to her siblings when they were young and afraid.   
She apologizes to Cassandra, and the Seeker looks almost surprised. But she does assert that no one should hurt Cole.   
For Blackwall there is a nod, for Lady Vivienne a promise that scouts would still look for the Circle’s books, and both give her such strange looks, but looks that betray nothing. They do not know.  
Bull knows what this is, and she says nothing to him to tarnish their unspoken goodbye, but she does pull Krem in for a hug that seems to unnerve the boy more than anything else.   
So few hours left. She spends them busy. Her room is still as sparse as it was when she woke up ages ago, but she tidies it, everything in its place, and clears her things into a small chest at the door. Her hunters garb is still destroyed from the Conclave, and what came after, so she can’t pull it back on and pretend that the end will be exactly as the beginning. But she doesn’t pull on the fine dark Inquisition coat either. Instead there is a scout’s uniform that she took up months ago, bartered some afternoon hour with Seggrit for a spool of embroidery thread and a needle, and she takes to that uniform instead to finish her work. It is still nondescript, but now it is more hers, with Dalish scrollwork along the hems, tiny outlined embrium blossoms crawling across the breast, bare forms of halla twined in them. It’s not quite done, but it’s close enough, and she finishes off the forms as best as she can before Cassandra comes knocking. It’s time, of course. Everyone is ready for her.   
She pulls on her scout’s uniform and walks the path to the Temple of Sacred Ashes with head held high.   
One last thing.  
\---------  
Except closing the Breach doesn’t succeed in killing her. She sits in Haven for hours after while the small town celebrates, raucous and alive, and stares at the scarred skies. She had stared into the Breach until the Templars were at the end of their hold. Willed her sister to stumble out of it as she had. Willed it to give her some sort of answer, or swallow her whole, and when it doesn’t, when she can’t bring herself to walk forward and into it, she closes it. It is agonizing, but it does not kill her.   
She’s still in her scout’s uniform, and her fingers work deftly, embroidering the last bit of a halla’s horns to the sash at her waist in faint, faint gray, barely noticeable. It would be too noticeable if she died during the celebration, she reasons, so instead she spends it at work, the last busy work she has. It is done. The Breach is sealed. She is still here. Kraehe is still not. Her penance for her failure waits as the moon rises higher in the sky.   
It is Cassandra who finds her there first, sitting on the little ledge behind the requisition officer’s tent. And of course it is Cassandra. Cassandra was always there to pull her back up and keep her going. She imagines that Cassandra may take this last betrayal, Kestrel’s death, the hardest of all. And she does not deserve that.   
“Solas confirms the heavens are scarred but calm. We’ve reports of lingering rifts, and many questions remain.” The Seeker says in her way, to the point and honest but also just this side of caring. Cassandra’s eyes take in the forms of embroidery sprawling across Kestrel’s uniform with mild curiosity. “But this was a victory. Word of your heroism has spread. And you are…embroidering flowers.”   
“It doesn’t feel like time to celebrate.” She offers the Seeker honestly in explanation, shrugs her shoulders and ties off a knot with her teeth. “And I need something else to focus on. Not much of a dancer, you see.”  
She gestures at the celebration with a wry smile. It is a practiced lie. A good one, because it is mostly true. While she can dance perfectly well, it’s just not her favored activity.   
“Perhaps you are right. With the Breach closed, this alliance will need new focus.” Cassandra ends, sighing. Forever the leader, she takes a new meaning from Kestrel’s words, makes them positive. “Your work for the Inquisition, it has-“   
Bells overtake the Seeker’s voice, and Kestrel’s eyes follow her ears, up the mountain. There are little blurs of light, movement in the snow. Cassandra stiffens next to her, hand already grasping at the sword on her hip. Kestrel’s own bow and quiver are tucked away behind her, and she reaches for them as the bells continue to toll.   
“We must get to the gates.” Cassandra yells, and Kestrel is powerless but to follow, the familiar pull in her limbs as present as ever. She is tired, but this is not her planned death, and she will not let Haven burn if she can help it. She owes its occupants that much loyalty.   
She calls out to Bull, Cole, and Vivienne as she rushes past them, hurrying after Cassandra.  
“So, celebratory drinks are on hold?” Bull calls, and is a simple gesture. She responds to the unspoken interest that she is not dead quite yet.   
“When this is done, the last round will be on me.” She calls back, and he hauls up his axe to follow. Cole is simply there already, and Vivienne trails behind, distaste and alarm clear upon her face. “I’d like you three to back me up, if that’s alright. Solas is best behind to clear the wounded, Blackwall can tend to stragglers, and Sera…” A quick look behind reveals Sera is hurrying servants into the Chantry with a determined look. “Right. To the gates, then.”   
Cassandra is already demanding answers of Cullen at the gate, Josphine whirling between them. There is no banner. It is too big. They are too small. Haven is not built for a siege.   
A pounding at the door interrupts them, a clipped and polished accent calling. Her hands open the door before her mind even considers it. And then there is a man, injured and battered, with a ridiculous mustache. Tevinter, she thinks. She’d recognize Tevinter in his clothes, his accent, his hair. He barely rights himself.  
“Ah. I’m here to warn you. Fashionably late, I’m afraid.”  
“It happens.” She replies honestly, and looks around. Bodies litter the area. “Your work?”  
“Impeccable, I know.” He smiles, and then falls, smacking into Cullen as he does. “Might exhausted, don’t mind me. But there you are. I came to tell you what happened with the mages at Redcliffe, you’re not going to like it. They are under the command of the Venatori, in service to something called the Elder One.”  
“Ah.” She manages, bitter reminder of Envy creeping through her mind. “I suppose he’s a little angry about the Templars. And not having a puppet wearing my face to command.”  
“A puppet wearing your…what?” Cullen frowns at her.   
“It’s complicated. Honestly I did not anticipate living long enough to explain. But that’s no matter.” She holds out a hand to the unfamiliar mage. “Is there anything else?”  
“Calpernia. The woman, she commands the Venatori.” He points to the mountain, and distantly, Kestrel can make out the form of a slender figure with a staff. Behind her, another form appears from the snow, dark and tall and unnatural. It’s the form she saw at Therinfal. “And that-“  
“The Elder One.” Kestrel breathes, and sets her shoulders. “How did…”  
“They were already marching on Haven. I risked my life to get here first. Barely.” The mage manages, fatigue drawing around his eyes. Kestrel nods, and steels her spine, turning to the Commander.  
“Cullen…”  
“Haven is no fortress. If we are to withstand, we must control the battle.” Cullen turns and begins issuing orders to the straggling scouts and soldiers, and Kestrel levels her eyes once more on the mage.  
“Run to the Chantry. They will help you. If they try not to, tell them I will personally smack them upside the head. That usually spurs decently enough.” She smiles then, and it is a brutal smile, all teeth and no eyes.   
“You don’t even know me, and you’ll vouch? Perhaps the rumors were harsher than I’d thought.” He quirks up an eyebrow, but does as he’s told, and Bull gives her an unsettled look. Oddly enough, so does Vivienne.   
“No, the rumors are appropriate. Best go to the Chantry for now, regardless.” She sighs, “You can argue with me about Tevinter later, both of you. We take our help where we get it. Now, help me.”  
“Of course.” Offers Cole, and she smiles brightly at him with far less teeth.  
“You’re an excellent boy, Cole, and I’m very glad you’re here. Let’s kill some Venatori, shall we?”   
“Love to, Boss.”  
“Best get started then, dear.”  
\------  
The battle is nearly salvageable until the dragon appears. Avalanches wrest the Venatori from their march. Soldiers are exultant.  
And then there is a dragon. An Archdemon.   
Their retreat is not quick enough.  
“At this point, just make them work for it.”  
Truer words she has never felt deeper in her cold heart.  
Chancellor Roderick is dying. The mage from the gates helps him to rest.   
The Elder One has marched all the way here for her.  
She looks at the wounded, the faithful in the Chantry, and though she bears no love for this life, for a moment she is afraid.   
“It can have me.”  
\------  
Of course, they deny her this. Her sacrifice. She arms the last trebuchet, points it to the mountain, and bids her companions retreat to the pilgrim’s path with the rest. And then there is the Elder One.   
He is grotesque, filled with red lyrium, jutting, twisted. His hands on her wrist are like digging blades, and she can feel the blood running down her forearm, staining her sleeves and their delicate vines. The Anchor, he, Corypheus, calls it, rips into her bones, fills her entire body with a brutal light.   
“It is your fault, Herald. You interrupted a ritual years in the planning. And instead of dying, you stole its purpose. You, and that wailing little girl.” Corypheus twists a hand, and the Anchor burns into her flesh, her breath catching in her throat like a blade. “I do not know how you survived. But what marks you as touched, what you flail at rifts, I crafted to assault the very heavens!”  
The Anchor shatters in her hand, splintering itself further into the muscle and bone than before. She’s dropped.   
“The gall.”  
She gasps and winces, digging her other palm into the frozen earth.   
“I never wanted this! I want nothing of this! Just my sister!”  
“Pity. The Anchor is permanent. And I see no sister here. You have nothing, are nothing, without that mark.” He drags her up again, and she feels the bones of her forearm splinter. “I once breached the fade in the name of another. To serve the old gods of the empire in person.”  
She can barely hear him through the rush of blood, of pain in her ears.   
“-Champion withered Tevinter and correct this blighted world. Beg that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty.”  
“This is not news to me.” She grits out a laugh, and he throws her, her back connecting hard with the side of the trebuchet.  
“The Anchor is permanent. You have spoiled it with your stumbling.”  
Pain and green cloud her vision.   
A flare in the snow.  
One more step, she thinks.  
One more.  
“Here’s your prize.” She says softly.  
The mountain roars as it engulfs.  
\------  
It is of course Cassandra again who drags her in from the snow. Wearily, she thinks, perhaps she should one day thank the Seeker for that purpose.


	5. Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kestrel grieves, and tries to find a new purpose after Haven's destruction.

The wrong elf brings Kestrel to Skyhold, a place he claims waits for someone to simply hold it, and she watches him with weary eyes as they go along the path. Always, always, the shifting air around him, the inscrutable slant of his eyes, she knows something is wrong. She knows that this is a mistake, trusting, following. But there is a caravan behind her, and she can step carefully, scout widely and breathe cold air, and that is familiar enough to balance. To keep her from pointing a dagger into Solas’ pale throat and take the answers she knows he has but will not give willingly. Someday, she just might. But for now there are a hundred cold, dying people at her back, and she is still a hunter, still a scout. Still someone's protector, as she has always been.

And there is a castle now, reached in the late afternoon and rejoiced about. She sleeps on a bed, hastily thrown together, but warm and soft enough that her body sinks into it, like the earth that she once wanted to swallow her whole. The soldiers, the civilians, the pilgrims, they rest in a castle’s walls instead of a village’s timber fences. If she could bring herself to move again, she would survey the thing herself, look for cracks and boltholes and ancient hiding places, high points, salvageable antiquities. She always had an eye for what could be made do with. But as soon as her knees hit the soft mattress on the floor she is gone, exhausted and broken. Her sister is gone. Her brothers are far away. She has a castle and an army and advisors and friends and worries, and her limbs grow into sprawling roots as her head blooms into dreams.   
\-------------------------------  
She wakes to the dark of night and the faintest feeling of a soft, familiar hand slipping from her own. Her eyes adjust quickly, used to the low light and used to the sense of restlessness that thrums through her veins. Her bare feet hit stone floors with a hiss, frigid and hard but sturdy, and the ragged quilt is pulled around her shoulders, covering a winding puzzle of bandages and healing poultices that crisscross her flesh. She should be dead. She wanted to be dead. But she isn’t, and she’s here, she has a castle and a fear and hands that ache to do something mindless. And so she pads softly out of the tower room she’d collapsed in, whisper-light steps across the battlements. Below the courtyard is sprawling, full of ruins and tents and a dozen burned-low fires. Most of the tents are shabby, those that aren’t the Inquisition’s, old threadbare things or thrown together attempts with holes in the sides and tops that leave their inhabitants open to the air. Sighing, she pulls her needle and stained thread from the bloodied sash on her belt, its own halla and florals ruined by the injuries she’d sustained by surviving, and takes the few steps there are two at a time, skipping over crumbling stone with light feet. 

The grass below is cold and wet, but startlingly alive and soft, and Kestrel takes a moment to appreciate the feel of it between her toes as she squats down, threads her needle through the side of a piece of thick canvas, pulls the gaping tear closed with an expert whipstitch. She keeps going, in the deep of the night, mending tents to block out the chill, stoking fires back to warmth and safety. No one wakes. They are all as exhausted as she is, she imagines. At least now they’ll awaken warm. This is familiar work, the work of a caretaker, the work she’d been at for years before anyone ever tried to call her a Herald. She'd done it in forests and on roads, in cities and small villages, and perhaps a castle is simply an added step to a dance she knows well. Perhaps it can be simple, if it is like this. 

Her shoulders ache and her fingers are chapped and bloody when she finishes, but the courtyard is warm and her ragged quilt is tucked tight around a haggard young woman and her child when she stumbles, pitches into the damp grass in front of the castle’s stone steps. Her hands rush out to catch her, but instead hang in the air, suspended inches from the stone as a strong arm wraps around her waist, pulling her back up. The Iron Bull’s vast chest is at her back, and then he lets go, letting her turn to look up at him with heavy eyes. 

“Thank you,” she manages hoarsely, and goes to adjust the quilt at her shoulders to keep out the chill, before she remembers. Instead, she wraps her arms tight, biting her tongue against the ache that wracks through her body at the movement. 

“I don’t think Cassandra will be happy about pulling your frozen body back to safety again, Boss.” He shakes his head, but it isn’t judgmental. She’d almost say it was approving, but she could simply be tired, hopeful. 

“Aren’t you cold?” She asks instead, gesturing her head with what she hopes is a pleasant enough smile, but it may well be a grimace. She’s too tired and too in pain to keep her masks and acts perfect. He rolls his eye at her, and there is a pointed look at her own bare shoulders, her chest wrapped tight with bandages and torn scraps of her uniform. She snorts weakly, “Yeah, well. Maybe I ought to get someone to warm me up, huh? Know anybody that’d fit the bill?” 

The returning expression is humored, but tired. 

“That’s definitely not what you need right now.” Is all he says, but he holds out that arm as she sways again, and she takes it gratefully. He leads her on back, up the stone stairs to her improvised nest, only lets her go when she sinks back into the old down and piled blankets.

“And how do you know what I need, ser Bull?” She bites on her words, feels them ache in her teeth to drive off the exhaustion. He’s right, but she’s tired, and it would be easy. It would be so easy to let it happen and let it exhaust her. It would let her sleep without dreams of sisters crying and begging, of acquaintances burning, of a monster with her face. 

“Everyone needs something, and I know what I know,” He responds, quite unhelpfully, but he doesn’t leave, just sits down and leans back on the stone walls near enough to her to be heard, but far enough that she can’t touch him, “Maybe if you stop doing dumb shit, you’ll find out.”

“Mm,” she groans, and pulls blankets around herself, staring blearily back at him, “I’m very good at doing dumb shit, though. Look at this. We have a castle because I did some dumb shit.”

He huffs, an amused thing, and she smiles at him, her real smile, crooked and sad. The Herald of Andraste isn’t in this room, it’s only Kestrel, only the tired, broken-open shell of a woman. Her eyes burn with tears that she won’t let through, and she’s thankful. She balls a fist into a blanket and rubs at her cheeks roughly, laughing a cold harsh trill.

“I was supposed to die,” She calls into the dark, and to his credit, the Iron Bull doesn’t move a muscle, but his face says he knew. She knew that he knew. But she hadn’t said it out loud before. She was afraid to, “I was hoping I would. When we left Therinfal, I was ready. I thought I’d done all I could. It was one last chance, and then, if she didn’t come back, I would go to join her, and if she did come back it would be alright, because I should have died instead anyway.”  
She sniffs, and curls her knees to her chest, lets her hair tickle her skin where the fabric is torn. 

“I failed. The one thing I was meant to do, and I failed. I can’t even die right.” Kestrel laughs, and she can’t look him in the eye anymore. She’s afraid of what she’ll see.   
“My baby sister is dead because of me, Bull. The people from Haven are dead, the mages from Redcliffe are slaves to a godsdamned darkspawn Magister because of me. Because I did something stupid. Because I thought, the Templars can nullify magic, if they can make it stable, I can reach in and grab my sister. I left those mages to a fate worse than death. I let them destroy Haven because I was still there, I wasn’t dead, I hadn’t run. I was selfish.” 

The dark is so quiet, for a moment, and her eyes are closed so tight, that she almost thinks he’s left. That she’s lost the man she’s come to consider a friend, someone she understood and who understood her. The brutal axe at her side in a fight and the calm, sturdy hand that kept her from falling in the dark. 

“What makes you think that dying is the only thing you can do to fix things, Kes?” He is a quiet rumble, and he makes her ribs ache. She hiccups, and then she’s crying, sobbing into the mattress like a broken open dam. He doesn’t console her. He doesn’t touch her, or try to make her stop; even if she can’t help but think he has to be uncomfortable. Men are so often uncomfortable when she cries, and it’s been so long since she’s let herself do it, that all she is is a collection of gasping, raking sobs, choked back wails and painful breaths. She cries until she stops making noise, until exhaustion takes over her limbs, and the shaking, stuttering of her shoulders is still, quiet and tired. 

“What else is there? What else is left for me to do? What else am I even supposed to be?” She manages with rasping breath, when she has no tears left to give to the dead. When she can open her eyes again, and see that the Iron Bull didn’t leave her to weep in a cold tower. When the sunrise starts to filter in through the cracks, and she can barely stay awake. 

“Tonight, when you have a minute after all the bullshit and panic. I want to show you something.” He says it plain as can be, steady and strong Bull, as he stands to leave. He waits, and she nods, promises in her hoarse voice that she’ll meet him in the night, she’ll listen. She’ll be alive then. 

He leaves her, and she falls into a dreamless sleep. It's comforting, promising; there will be no hands and no familiar warmth for her when she wakes.  
\---------------------------------------------------  
Cassandra wakes her, and Josephine has a set of hideous human clothes for her to change into, to hide her ruined body with. They were to make her seemly, especially now, less wild animal and more dutiful soldier. The same purpose her dark Inquisition coat had held at Therinfal, before it was covered in blood and lyrium and demonic ichor. She’s still hoarse from the night, and whispers cautiously to Leliana that she’d rather make her own outfits if all the Inquisition-provided ones were this ugly. She's serious about it, suddenly contemplative. She did used to be a seamstress, after all, not that her advisors know that. There is yet so much they do not know about her. She earns a clever, wry smile from the spymaster, and Josephine tuts, but her advisors leave the room, leave her with Cassandra and a feeling of dread. The Seeker is awkward, but proud, frightened under all her armor and ceremony. 

Cassandra leads her to the stone staircase, to the first landing, and Leliana holds an absurdly large sword that Kestrel can’t quite lift on a good day, much less a day where her shoulders feel like fire, but. They name her Inquisitor. And she promises, with duty on her tongue and guilt in her veins, that she will defeat Corypheus and restore balance and peace because it is right, in front of the whole of the castle, every survivor. They laud her. They call her Inquisitor with pride and hope. And she lifts that sword as best as she can before her so-recently dislocated shoulder whines and she begs Cassandra with her eyes to take the damned thing back. Mercifully, the Seeker does. 

The rest of the day is spent in a pained blur, agony a constant companion as she follows her advisors around Skyhold highlighting repairs, necessities, next steps. She is Inquisitor now, bound to these decisions and this hall, and her body feels so incredibly heavy that she walks through their concerns nearly like a dream. And then the sun is setting. Leliana leaves to assess the rookery, Josephine to clear an old desk in a room off the main hall. Cullen stays the longest, talking strategies, refusing to tell her how many perished in Haven when she asks to the point she is nearly furious with him. But he leaves her too, eventually, drawn away by scout reports. She walks through the makeshift surgeon’s bay, sees the fading daylight of her nighttime work stitching tents, and she listens to Vivienne, Solas, and Cassandra argue about Cole again. 

She pays little mind to it, to them and their squabbling, and finds the boy herself, walking along the injured soldiers. She listens to him, and lets him kill a dying man as mercy. Unspoken, he fixes her with those pale eyes, shadowed by his absurd hat. 

“You’re too bright. Like counting birds against the sun. But…,” He is painfully awkward, holding out a hand with her silverite dagger in it. She hadn’t even noticed it was missing, that it had been taken from her pant leg. Its surface still gleams with her guilt and longing for an end, as Cole holds it aloft, “This wasn’t your fault. They don’t blame you. She doesn’t blame you. You’re still needed, and it scares you. An answer to a question that only has more questions.”

Kestrel is quiet as she takes back her dagger, slides it into boots that don’t fit right, don’t leave room for it. But the weight is familiar and kind. She is gentle, placing a hand on Cole’s should for a ghost of a moment in thanks, face open and sincere in its pain. He nods. 

“I want to help. I want to stay.” He doesn't specify what that means, and she doesn't ask, and it's better that way. She’s glad. She walks to the ruined tavern with a lighter head, heart still bleeding cold but beating. Just as she promised.

Bull is waiting there, and stuffed into the crook of an enormous arm is a bundle of drab green clothing, a warped pauldron peeking through. She fixes him with a quizzical frown, and he smiles, holding the bundle out to her. This change of clothes, however, she is somewhat grateful for. Tucked behind the corner and the training dummies the quartermaster pulled together for Cassandra's wrath, she pulls on a mercenary uniform that is surprisingly close to being her size, occluding the ugly beige mess with loose, thick weave, a warm jacket and minimal armor, a scarf that pulls around comfortably. When she wanders back out, Bull motions at her hair, and she shrugs, pulling it out of it’s tightly wound, snarled bun and letting it cover her ears, her forehead and cheeks. 

“Why am I dressed like this?” She queries, and Bull shakes his head, urges her on towards a grouping of soldiers, drinking, trying to stay warm in the chilly night.   
And then she knows why she’s dressed like that. She takes the cues, doesn’t talk, but she does listen, listens to young recruit and old, seasoned and fresh, and it is painful but good, in a way. To see that something is left to do, and people who still believe even if she does not. Even if she never did. 

It’s a long few hours, and a lot of drinks that Bull mostly takes, but when the soldiers disperse to tents or patrols, she remains. And so does he. 

“I know every person under my command. You don’t have that. But knowing a few faces might help.” He offers as an explanation, and she smiles that real smile before shaking her head at him again. 

“I resent how much you know,” She laughs, and it hurts, too much trapped in her lungs. She wants to say, 'I resent how much you know me. How you know what to do to make me stay. I resent whatever forces made you and I like this, now, of all times', wants to make it clear and loud and real, but she can't. She won't. It isn't fair and it isn't right and she doesn't have the words to make it rational, to make it nothing, instead of everything. Her fingers go to pull her hair back, but catch knots instead, and she winces, leaving it loose instead, “But…this was good. Thank you.”

He smiles, and she thinks, for a brief moment, that everything is perfectly alright. That perhaps she can do this. One more thing. One more thing to make it right again, to try to earn her own forgiveness, to earn the faith put in her. 

She doesn’t try to kiss him. Not that she'd get far, if he didn't help, and she won't face that possibility yet. She doesn’t sully the moment, doesn’t give into that desperation, that blinding impulse. But her hand stays soft on his forearm, a quiet and comfortable silence trapped between them, a warmth, and when she leaves to go find her bed she can hold that moment in her mind like a bowstring, thrumming tight as the arrow flies from her fingers. Like a breath released.


	6. Ochre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kestrel returns to the Dalish, and the truth.

They’re in the Exalted Plains for two days when it happens. When Kestrel gets a sword run through the flesh of her side, a bit of cloth that does nothing to stop cold, rusted iron. It’s a wet, tearing sensation that causes the anchor to flare and burst, destroying the shambling dead with a brutal efficiency that rocks through her body, leaving her gasping, gushing open. 

It’s a corpse that does it, a fact that both Kestrel and Bull begrudge later, because they are both better than that, better than this, but it’s a corpse nonetheless. By the time they dredge up out of the ramparts to signal their safety, her undershirt is soaked through, and she can feel the weave stick into the flesh, brush up against slivered skin with every twist of her body. And then there are no more ramparts to clear for the day, but blood, so much blood, dripping through her fingers, and they barely make it to a rocky arch bordering the trail to camp when she stumbles, smashes into the rock jaw-first, and she’s gone. 

When she wakes, it is not in her Inquisition camp. It is not surrounded by worried scouts or Cassandra’s stern but concerned, motherly face. Above her hovers the frowning face of another Dalish elf, an older man with wispy white hair and vallaslin patterned after Andruil. The sort her younger brother had, but starker, dark lines instead of Osprey’s pale gold. An agonized turn of her head reveals only more Dalish, and the treasured, beautiful sight of aravels, of halla and crafter’s tools. The wispy haired elf clears his throat, and she stares back up, golden brown eyes watering and spilling over.

“Did they finally decide to return me,” She rasps in the elven tongue, and tries to will herself to sit up, only to feel the bright, hot pain course through her side again, “Because if so, I’m afraid it’s to the wrong clan, as you are not my aunt Deshanna.”

“No, da’len, they did not let you go.” The man, the Keeper, by his robes, shakes his head, and gestures off to the side, away from the encampment. Her head turns slowly, and she can see Bull, Dorian and Solas arguing softly nearby. Bull meets her eye, and there’s half a smile there, hidden under his discomfort. The Keeper sighs, “You were wounded nearby, and your companions helped some of our hunters fight off the undead, so as a favor returned I allowed them to bring you here to be healed. I must say, when I heard that the leader of the Inquisition was an elf, I did not expect one of the people. How did you get here, da’len?”

Kestrel bites down on a laugh because it feels like grinding glass into her chest, and slowly drags herself up to her elbows with the Keeper’s help.

“I was sent to the Conclave to observe. I did my job too well, and now I lead the faithful of Andraste, who get angry with me when I pray to Sylaise. It has been a very eventful few months, Keeper…” She bites her lip, frowning.   
“Hawen, child. I am Hawen.”

“Keeper Hawen. Thank you. I would not impose on your hospitality further, but I do…I do have connections. I would return the favor you have done for me here.” She trips on her words, and they’re in the common tongue halfway through, but Keeper Hawen smiles and shakes his head. 

“You have no debt to me, da’len. However. One of our hunters, Loranil, would wish to join the Inquisition. I am not so sure. If you want to do us any favors, I would consider allowing him to assist you afterwards,” Hawen gestures to a young man, fresh and clear and still raw red from his vallaslin, “But the day grows to a close. You are one of the people, and currently under my care. Stay for dinner, if you would.”

She blanches, and then recovers, shivering. 

“I don’t want my camp to come looking, and believe the wrong thing. Let me…let me send my companions on; to tell them I’m alright and will return soon. But I would be honored to dine with you, and discuss these favors.” She nods, and gently waves at her companions, bringing them closer. Solas can’t hide the dismissive disdain in his eyes when he looks at the camp, and Dorian looks uncomfortably out of place while still curious, but Bull shakes his head, and so her mages return to camp without him. The qunari settles in beside her instead, waiting for Hawen to walk away and begin talking to a group of hunters before he speaks.

“I thought we talked about doing dumb shit, boss.” He rumbles, and it’s not angry, not upset, just concerned, friendly. It’s enough. She pats his arm softly.

“It was not my intention to be skewered by a corpse with a rusty blade, I assure you. But Dorian was an inch away from being killed by that horror, and Solas…well. I have no idea where Solas was. And you were busy running seven skeletons through with the nice new axe I got you, making mix-and-match pieces. It was simply an oversight.”  
“It was dumb shit. On both of our parts. I was supposed to have your back.”

“Technically, this was my side, and Solas was supposed to have my back. Except he was too busy muttering about enchantments and the Veil to do it. You’re the Charger, the man with the big swing. You were where you needed to be,” She shrugs, and grits her teeth against the wave of nauseated pain that ripples across her abdomen, “Thank you. For bringing me to the Dalish. For convincing them to help.”

“How do you know Solas didn’t do it? He’s the elf. These are elves. Elfy.” He says, but she doesn’t believe him for a second, and rolls her eyes where he can see. He shrugs.   
“Solas hates the Dalish, and frankly, the Dalish would likely dislike him back, as I do. And Dorian, well, I know he’d try, but he’d probably prefer to take me back to camp. So, it was you who asked them. It was you who brought me here, instead of to camp. And I’m grateful.” She smiles through pained teeth, and leans heavily on his side, keeping her tightly bandaged side from bumping into anything. It occurs to her that her armor is gone, and a quick glance shows what remains serviceable of it, minus her shirt, ruined, and pants, still hugging her legs, tucked neatly in a pile near her pallet. A loose woven top without sleeves, airy and light as the breath of a mother covers her chest instead, tied in a knot above her bandages to keep it clean. A mischievous smile worms its way onto her lips. “Hey, Bull?”

“Yeah Boss?” He responds lightly. 

“Did everyone here see my tits?” She sing-songs, and he snorts, but nods along, and she laughs in short, winded gasps before Keeper Hawen comes back to fetch them and lead them towards the real Dalish encampment.

It’s a short walk, and then she and Bull are tucked around the fire with the elves who had hung back. The children and the elderly, the ill. The encampment on the river would fool humans, and may have even fooled Bull for a moment, but led into the cavern carved into the rocks, the truth was there. The decoy had nothing on the real camp, with its plentiful tents and smattering of half-finished crafts and drying meats, berries being mashed into a devilishly sweet wine. The smell of it, the sight of it, was enough to make Kestrel’s heart ache, thinking of the time in her childhood where this was perfect, this was good. This was home, once, or familiar enough to suit. Bull’s arm holds her steady, again, again, as they sit.

A child laughs, and Kestrel winces at the sound, seeing the lightest smear of long black hair whip past the edge of her vision. Bull doesn’t ask. He doesn’t know all of it, but he knows about her sister now. He knows about Kraehe, about her beloved baby crow, lost to the Fade. If she stiffens, he knows why. If she takes a ragged breath, he shifts, and her weight leans further on him in a comforting sort of way. It’s good, and it’s enough, and she settles in and stares into the fire until she’s handed a small bit of crusty bread peppered with oats and roasted felandaris seeds, wrapped around a slice of what she’d bet was snoefleur, dried and preserved with spices and a bevy of roasted root vegetables. The recipe is one she’s familiar with, one she’s made on her own, for her siblings a hundred, a thousand times. But it’s been at least a few years since she last bit into it, and she’s suddenly ravenous, tearing into the bits of meat and bread with a vigor long since thought lost. She almost doesn’t breathe, just consumes it all, whole, with a hunger that aches like bruises. 

It isn’t until she’s devoured it all, licked her fingers clean, that she realizes that she’s being watched. Keeper Hawen, and a woman, older, tired, with the same eyes. Others may have averted their gaze, but the Keeper and his sister stare, and she knows Bull is paying attention. She won’t meet any of their eyes. She doesn’t have to.

“How long has it been since you were with a clan, da’len? Truly?” The old woman whispers, but her voice carries across the fire and freezes Kestrel to her spot. Her muscles ache. Her ribs hurt. Bull is still there, feeling her tense against his side. He is still there. She is not alone in the snow.

“…I was 17.” She whispers, and it’s tense, hard. It has to be to cover the ache of it. She was 17. Kraehe’s age. She was so young when she left, when she took them in the night and disappeared. She’s nearly 29. It’s been so long. Too long. It feels like a bone that doesn’t heal quite right, that makes for a lifelong limp, an earthshattering pain when it rained.

“Hale’mira’s daughter, you have been lost so long,” The woman says, and Kestrel’s chest burns at her mother’s name. The fox, the fox, her mother gone for years, for ages with a forced forgetfulness, “I met your mother once. You are her spitting image, an echo I did not think to see again. She was very young then, full of you, in fact, if I recall. She was a glorious woman. The finest mage I’ve ever met. Her sister, Deshanna, well, she was good, but Hale…Clan Lavellan had such promise. So, da’len, tell me… What happened to your mother?”

Kestrel is quiet, each breath shallow and cold, hard rattling. Her stomach aches, and she has to will herself to keep her dinner in, to avoid throwing up on her own feet, debasing the hospitality she’d been shown. These are questions she had hoped never to answer. Memories she’d tried so hard to avoid.   
\------------------

She is a furious and naive 17 when she stands before the Keeper, brown calloused hands tucked into fists at her sides, cheeks still clean and unaltered by anticipated vallaslin and red with rage. She has been on her own for years already, held her own as a hunter and caretaker, and now, now she stands, ready and angry and afraid of the inevitable.

"It is simply not the way, da'len, it is not the way, and if we could find a place in another clan, I would send her there, but there is no need for mages at any of those we keep in contact with. You must understand, Kestrel..." Keeper Deshanna tries, she tries, but Kestrel's anger is white hot, boiling inside.

"Our ways are lost anyway! What's one exception, Deshanna? What's one act of mercy?" Kestrel pulls herself to her full height but she has always been short, slight, and Deshanna still towers over her, even aging. "She is your niece!"

"I can't do this out of favoritism, da'len! Please, calm down and listen to me. If there was any other way, I would, in a heartbeat. You four are blood of my blood, and I am proud to have Lidae as my second apprentice, proud of the hunters you and Osprey have become, but Kestrel, there is no way to do this. I am but one Keeper, I can't-"   
"Mamae would be ashamed of you." Kestrel screams, howls it, and the camp stirs, pretends not to notice the heated confrontation. Eyes, a dozen pairs of eyes are on her back. "She is a little girl!"  
"When your mother returns she can tell me that herself, and I would gladly leave the clan and let her take her place back, dalassan. (little arrow) But I cannot make a different decision!" Deshanna tries to grasp Kestrel's hands, to pull them in. But Kestrel's nails scrape her fingers free with blood and pain, and Deshanna yelps, pulls back with fearful eyes. the young elf's eyes are wide, blown out pupils with an ancient and wild hungry anger in them, the anger of betrayal and heartache. 

"Hale'din, Deshanna! (Hale is dead!) Mamae, papae, they are dead and gone! You are the only family we have left and you have betrayed us. You would betray us and lose us all rather than try to change something that is wrong." Kestrel's words slip through her teeth like blood, like dropping ichor and bile, rotten and cruel and hateful. The familiar weight of the bow at her back, usually so comforting, feels like an anchor to drag her into the dirt, let the ground consume her in her hatred. Oh, and she had loved Deshanna, loved and needed her mother's sister so badly these last few years, but love bitters so quickly in the young elf's heart. It does not survive the fire. 

“Ma harel, da’len!” (You lie, child) Deshanna whispers with agonized eyes, tired and worn down after only a few years as Keeper. Only a few years since her own sister, her Hale, had gone missing, and the old Keeper died, leaving Deshanna, the second, not the first, as Keeper before her time. "The scouts saw her, and you know where she went, and Hale is clever, just like you, she'll come home-" 

Kestrel looks at her aunt with nothing but contempt, without pity. A vile thing curled up in the heart of a young girl, the sort that took decades to die. 

"Mamae would have rather died than be a slave, Deshanna. She told me so herself. She knew! She and papae knew that going that far north for the ruin was dangerous, it was too close to Tevinter, but our history was there! If we do not risk something, our people are lost, they are dead, deader than our ancestors in the Graves because at least they fought!” Kestrel shakes her head, sharp teeth shining in the firelight, sharper than any dagger to the heart. "She told me that if she didn’t come back, she was dead, she wouldn’t be a slave. She wouldn’t bear a life away from us, a life without freedom. She told me to take care of the boys, and Kraehe, even if she was a mage too, even if they all were, and I promised her. Deshanna, I promised her." It's all steel edged, empty of warmth, empty of understanding, and Deshanna can't answer before her niece is tearing the scarf from her neck, Deshanna’s present for a birthday past, and jamming it into Deshanna’s outstretched hands. Ma nuvenin, Deshanna. Tel’abelas. (As you wish, Deshanna. I’m not sorry.)

“Fen’harel ma ghilana, da’len. Ar lath ma, ir abelas.” (The Dread Wolf guides you, child. I love you, I’m sorry.) The Keeper calls, watching the shadows for any sign of her niece and finding none. Kestrel had always been too at home within them for Deshanna to even try. 

When the clan wakes in the morning the girl is gone, the secluded space of the camp empty and the small aravel built by their father gone. Lidae is gone with his notes and his experiments, and Osprey’s beautifully carved lanterns hang unlit, empty and burnt down in the night, his own halla presumably hooked to the aravel. Kraehe’s toys no longer linger around the fire, save for a trampled stuffed halla with a burnt out face. Nothing of Kestrel remains, save the scarf wound tight in Deshanna’s hands as she weeps alone.   
The fox’s children are all lost now.  
\-------------------  
Kestrel’s breath is burnt ashes and cinders, hot and crumbling in her throat as she tells the truth. How her mother died, or may as well be dead. About her father’s body. About leaving, and finding her way across the Free Marches as a scrawny teenage girl lugging three children behind her until their aravel breaks. How she found work in Markham, as a seamstress first, embroidering her mother’s beloved patterns into the seams of noblewomen’s gowns and weeping at night. Of how she remembered the old ways when the boys were old enough, and with Lidae’s help traced their own vallaslin, their own honors to the gods in the back of a shop. 

She does not tell them of the seamstress’ daughter, with lips like sweetened cherries and a heart as black as the depths of the sea. Of a new job, a quiet and bloody one, in the back of the market, in the dark of the street. Only of the job that took her to the Conclave. The one that cost her everything. The one that left Osprey as the butcher’s boy and Lidae hidden away in their tiny apartment behind the shop that Kestrel bought with blood that wasn’t hers to sell, the one that backed up to an open field, a forest deep and green. 

When she’s done, when it’s all been said, the old woman smiles. Comes in close, pats her hand with withered fingers. There are no consoling words. They aren’t needed. And it is dark in the night when Kestrel and Bull gather up her things from the fake camp, wander into the dark with a conjured bit of light offered up by Hawen. 

“You lied to Nightingale, and she didn’t catch it.” Bull offers quietly, and it’s so absolutely impressed and incredulous that Kestrel’s mouth almost quirks into a smile.

“She plays an Orlesian game. I play my own, and she doesn’t know the rules yet. I was going to tell her. I wrote a letter. For her, and for my brothers, for the truth. I was going to die, and none of you…none of them wanted to know me while I lived, not back in Haven. They wanted Andraste’s Herald. Not a Dalish seamstress from Markham who worked in more than needles,” She shakes her head, wraps her blood-stained coat around her shoulders against the night air, “And then it just…it became too hard. To tell them. To let Solas think he was right about my people, because they are still my people. I was an angry child. I shouldn’t have left, but I did. I can’t change that. I can’t change this,” She unclenches her first, lets the green filter into the air, “But I wanted to have who I am to them be on my terms, in a way. Not Andraste’s, or Deshanna’s, or the Fereldans. No one else’s but mine, now.” 

She can see the faint light of camp; see Dorian watching for them from the fire. It’s close enough that she can feel at ease again, feel the heat of memory fade into the twining branches of her life. 

Bull is still beside her, steady as ever. 

“Then it’s on your terms, Kes.” He says. They walk back into camp. She sleeps alone, but easier for the first time in years. Tomorrow almost seems kinder.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from 'Blinding' by Florence and the Machine  
> Playlist for Kestrel Lavellan found here: http://suan.fm/mix/v6AIcP-


End file.
